We regularly, in the interests of Plato-worship, disembody language and reason, with the narrow-mindedness Mark Johnson points out in an important recent book, The Body in the Mindl3 Our persistent evasion of the "Q" question makes for a great deal of self-centered, self-serving preaching and a great deal of self-satisfied practice. We do sometimes follow that master of contemptuous, self-satisfied self-absorp-tion, the Platonic Socrates, closely indeed.

This reminds me of Albert Camus' thoughts on absurdity, and what James Cone says in his book Black Theology and Black Power: "All aspects of this society have participated in the act of enslaving blacks, extinguishing Indians, and annihilating all who question white society's right to decide who is human....Absurdity arises as the black man seeks to understand his place in the white world. The black man does not view himself as absurd; he views himself as human. But as he meets the white world and its values, he is confronted with an almighty No and is defined as a thing. This produces the absurdity."